


for a thousand more

by queenklu



Series: tumblr fillets [3]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:25:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous asked: Athelstan/Lagertha/Ragnar, they don't get a happily ever after in every life. But in some they get better than that. Soulmate reincarnation au</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a thousand more

Athelstan doesn’t always figure it out. Lifetime upon lifetime he lives with a knot in his chest, hollow places under his lungs. A longing. He takes to the sea, whatever military ship will have him. He never lives long on the ocean.

Once he finds Ragnar on a ship in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, his blue blue eyes limned with kohl, his teeth bared in a snarl. The Captain hangs him for piracy. Athelstan walks a canonball overboard the next day.

In the Great Depression he’s rocked to sleep by the dust and the dirt always rolling, rolling, rolling under his worn bones, empty bottles clattering across the floorboards of a train car. He’s too drunk to protest when the police drag him from the train, leave him in a ditch that hasn’t seen water in a year. A family with nothing more than a cross to fill their empty bellies takes him in, and Athelstan thinks he sees Lagertha in their eldest daughter. It’s hard to tell with the dust filling his eyes, his lungs. It might be wishful thinking.

He finds Ragnar in a circus in Moscow, and they hold each other too hard, too hard, always leaving bruises. He finds them both in London but they’ve already found each other, and the bombs fall before he can gather up his courage to shatter their perfectly structured world.

At a Pride Parade in New York in 2012, they find him. He’s happy and sun drunk and waving his rainbow painted arms in the air, not thinking of anything except living. Between one leap and the next he feels a strong, steadying hand on his waist, another smaller hand on his back. He lands in their arms.

"Where have you been, hm?" Lagertha chides when he can’t find the air to speak.

"Looking for you," he chokes out.

"Foolish Priest." Ragnar nuzzles his neck, rough drag setting his skin on fire, and Athelstan feels like his heart might beat out of his chest. “Of the three of us, who is the best navigator?"

"You invent one compass and you never let it go," Athelstan starts, but Ragnar kisses him, and Lagertha kisses his neck, and Athelstan trembles until his rough edges are worn away, fitting them together the way they were always meant to fit.


End file.
